Coach sums up team’s position

K-State volleyball head coach Suzie Fritz recently made three comments that I think mark very accurately where her team finds itself right now.

1.) "It's hard to calculate if you're getting any better when you're playing some of the best teams in the country. I think we're making progress, but we're playing people that don't allow us to know if we're getting better."

Fritz is talking about the strength of the Big 12 Conference. As one of the most competitive leagues in the nation for volleyball, the Big 12 regularly sends many of its schools to the NCAA Tournament. Along with the Pac-10 and Big 10, the conference hosts many powerhouse teams, like No. 3 Nebraska, No. 10 Texas and No. 12 Iowa State.

This means that most any match in this section of the season will be a difficult one. Therefore, judging the K-State volleyball team by how many wins and losses it has is neither accurate nor a testament of the team's true ability. To see the latter, one must look at how the team plays its top opponents.

For instance, against Nebraska, K-State played extremely well and stayed even with one of the best teams in the country for some time, but a small run put the Cornhuskers ahead, and that slight lead is all a team needs, as Fritz herself said.

2.) "We're not bad, but we can't keep it together for quite long enough."

K-State certainly is not bad. With a spot right in the middle of one of the best conferences in the nation, the Wildcats are far above most schools. But with the strength of the Big 12, most matchups are pretty even, so all a team needs to win is a small lead.

When Fritz said, "We can't keep it together for quite long enough," she meant long enough in individual games. When a top-ranked opponent grabs a little run, then K-State has a good chance of losing. If the team could hold out with an even effort — stopping the runs on the other side of the net or stringing together its own — then the volleyball team would be right up there with the big names, where it belongs.

3.) "What I hope is that playing better leads to continuing to play better, and I want to be more focused on the process of improving rather than the results right now. If we can do that and we can improve enough, the results will come."

This summarizes the two previous quotations and shows Fritz's plan for propelling her team into the highest echelons. The results say that K-State is about average in the conference, which is not necessarily true, because it has players ranked in the top among all 11 teams. Thus, focusing on the results will not help the fact that they are not representative of the team's potential.

Focusing on improvement, which she said in the previous quote means playing more consistently and not letting the matches get away from her team, will begin to show K-State as it truly is, which is one of the best teams in the conference.